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Brexit and Trump votes screwed with our heart rates for months

By Chris Stokel-Walker

ENDURED sleepless nights in the aftermath of the Brexit vote? You weren’t the only one. A study of 11,600 wearers of Nokia Health devices shows our biorhythms shift during and after monumental political moments, including the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit vote.

Stress can cause sleepless nights and increase heart rates, but little was known about how this links to big societal changes. “We wanted to add in the quantitative data,” says Daniele Quercia of Nokia Bell Labs.

Quercia and his colleagues analysed data from people who wore health monitoring devices, such as smartwatches, …